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Blog Fiction
An Introduction to Blog Fiction Blog fiction is a form of electronic literature that uses serialized blog postings in diary format. In order for a work of literature to be considered blog fiction, the primary content driving the narrative must be text, rather than video, music or pictures. Additionally, the content tends to be released in serialized postings rather than all at once, as is characteristic of an e-book. Diary format is also a core element of the genre, as there is typically a reference to time passing and activities occurring between posts. Blog Fiction presents the author with a medium (the blog!) by which they are able to write through a fictional persona, or authorial voice, and record it on a blog instead of print. This authorial voice is depicted through the narrative and is specific to individual characters. The Blog format affords authors the opportunity to present multiple perspectives in episodic, or serial/diary, format, which presents the reader with a more holistic view of the narrative work. The management of time, in this "episodic" or "diary," in this narrative form is also up to the author and presents the option of posting in "actual time" v "hazy time." The Blogs of this genre are as such: Standard, Many to One, Many to Many, and Others. The Standard format involves a singular author writing for a blog. Many to One is quite the opposite and involves many authors writing for a single blog, while every author is identified for their individual post. The Many to Many form of blog fiction is the most complex; it involves not only multiple characters and writers, but multiple blogs that may, or may not be, intertwined with each other and the overall story. All Blog Fiction that is not included in these categories is considered under 'Other.' DustinM The Blog also allows for an element that most literature does not--audience interactivity. Because the work is published as a webpage on the Internet, comments and message boxes are inherent to the formatting of the blog. These opportunities for comments and message boxes allow for a recording of audience participation, so that the act of reading the blog becomes multi-generational. Starwalker by Melanie Edmonds (Malina Howard) Starwalker is a fictional blog written by Melanie Edmonds . In this story the main character is Starwalker, a star ship that has just awoken and rebooted and is getting ready to go on a mission. She has previously been awake and working, but her memory has been erased and she has to make sure that it does not happen again.This serialized fiction is in the genre of science fiction which "is a genre of fiction with imaginative but more or less plausible content such as settings in the future, futuristic science and technology, space travel, parallel universes, aliens and paranormal abilities. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Science_fiction It has also been around for quiet sometime. There have been many post made and currently the author is in the middle of book three. As I had mentioned, the blog has been around for a while so to read the whole thing would take ample amount of time. I decided to focus on the first chapter of the first book and analyze it, but it is so engaging I picture myself attempting to catch all the way up with the series. Initializing- Book 1, Chapter 1 In the first chapter of the first book, Starwalker has just come to life. As the reader, I was experiencing things for the first time, but so was she. As she explores herself and attempts to understand what she is, where she is and why she is there, she is extremely frustrated. I thought this was very interesting, because as the reader I could relate to the main character. As I began the text I was extremely frustrated because I had no idea what was going on or what was meant by the different types of texts and what was being said. Together, Starwalker and I, became more aware of what was going on. She became more aware of her self and where she was, while I learned these things through the text itself, but also was able to understand that certain words were a certain font to signal Starwalker's system, other words were a different font to symbolize Starwalker's individual thoughts, and then another font represented when Starwalker and other members of the crew or her internal programming were communicating. As the first chapter continues, Starwalker meets individuals such as Elliot, who is the chief engineer. She is undergoing many logs and check ups. The captain wants to make sure everything is perfect for their mission. The mission and what they are doing on the ship remains a secret to both Starwalker and the reader. After a talk with her captain, Starwalker thinks "so it's not just me and my newborn confusion: there are secrets here. My purpose, my cargo, my core - even the people who walk my deck and breath my air - won't be explained until we have detached from the JOP's umbilicals and I take my first steps out into the darkness". It is evident that there are secrets and together Starwalker and the reader must learn where the journey is headed. At the end of the chapter, the captain decides it is time for them to take off and start their mission. Starwalker has no idea where she is headed or for what reason, but in the following books I'm sure she finds out as does the reader. Besides the reader learning things along the journey with Starwalker, the text is interactive in otherways. Another way it is interactive is that on the website there is the ability to leave comments like many other blogs. In an article written by Eric Brantner, he discusses ways inwhich to make your blog more interactivehttp://www.seohosting.com/blog/blogging-tips/5-ways-to-make-your-blog-more-interactive/, and Melanie Edmonds, Starwalker ''uses some of these tips. The first tip is to use the TwtPoll, which is a poll that allows the reader to click if they like a post or not. It is a efficient and non-time consuming act, but allows the reader to interact with the text. The second tip that pertains to ''Starwalker is that the author should reply timely to comments on the blog. From the first chapter that I viewed, Melanie Edmonds does a good job responding effectively and letting the reader be involved in the blog. Overall, I think this text being a blog is very important to how it is read and understood. If this was just a book titled Starwalker ''it would not be the same. The serialization and interactiveness of it presented as a blog makes a difference. ''The Urban 30: "Gehenna" (Ben Simon) The Urban 30 is an example of blog fiction. Now in its 9th season, the premise of the blog is that a group of 30 superheroes banned together to protect District City, the nation’s capital which is plagued by crime and a high cost of living. Although the heroes originally worked in tandem with the police, the Urban 30 can no longer trust the corrupt department. Instead, they are on their own, guided by an all-knowing, mysterious man named Dispatch (apparently, their version of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle’s Master Splinter or X-Men’s Professor X). The blog community falls under the Many to One format of blog fiction, as outlined by blogger DustinM. In this sub-genre, there are several characters active in a single blog website, where it is evident which character is writing each blog post. In this instance, the way the text is constructed also mirrors what the text is about. Each hero writes separate blog entries, and is for the most part going through their challenges alone, occasionally crossing path with the other heroes. Similarly, the schedule for authorship and the way the diary posts are presented are such that each post is attributed to an individual hero and each author is responsible for their own posts, but occasionally the authors will comment on one another’s posts. The Character Gehenna Gehenna is described as a 322-year-old immortal from the Carribean islands, whose real name is Sarina Mondesi. She was previously married to another immortal named Samuel Mondesi, and is currently dating a man named Marcus Stryker. Both men have disappeared, and Gehenna has been drowning her sorrows in alcohol – several consecutive entries begin with her nursing a hangover, and she engages in other activities not typically associated with traditional superheroes like throwing up out of the side of her car door and having passionate sex in a back room at a party. In her mind she knows she has to focus, but she struggles to find discipline. While most of Gehenna’s diary entries do not appear to have any signs of interaction – no Facebook likes, Tweets, comments, etc. – one audience member with a username “Lorenzo” interacted on a post by saying, “Alcohol always works for me…” The comment is in reference to Gehenna’s substance abuse problem of using drugs and alcohol to mask guilt of her lost lover, Samuel. The Urban 30 as Remediation: Transparent Immediacy and Hypermediacy The Urban 30 remediates two creative formats, the blog and the comic book, to tell us a story in episodes and allow us to interact with it. It is primarily an example of transparent immediacy. For most of the postings, the authors attempt to disguise that these were written by real people who primarily live in Washington DC. Rather, the goal is to make it appear as if the fictional superheroes themselves just happen to keep an open blog on the internet where they write a diary entry every few weeks. The hypermediate nature – that is, instances where the piece of literature seeks to maximize its mediation by calling attention to the fact that it is being mediated – rarely shows through. It is primarily in the website’s top navigation bar and in particular the last portion of the Home page where the Urban 30 references that fact that it is a work of blog fiction, explains that their self-stated goal is “to reactivate imagination,” and invites readers to become authors by providing an email to contact. ''The Urban 30'': "Hitman" (Abhinav Agarwal) "Hitman" Adopts Blog Fiction "Hitman" belongs to a collection of character blogs that comprise to create the blog fiction, The Urban 30, a narrative about a team of undercover agents who were recruited to fight crime and corruption in the nation's capital, the District City. Primarily residing on textual media, the work follows a typical blog infrastructure with entries posted on a periodic basis, thus encapsulating a serial storytelling format. A team of writers are responsible for each character in The Urban 30. However, since each character, including Hitman, possesses their own blog, The Urban 30 has adopted a many to many format. A fascinating component of this situation is that each character's actions has the potential of affecting other characters within the narrative, thus requiring involved collaboration between author teams of separate characters. "Hitman" does qualify DustinM's definition of blog fiction and runs on hazy-time.http://blog.blogfiction.org/2008/08/blog-fiction-defined.html Genres & Approach Style As the other characters in The Urban 30, "Hitman" narrative is influenced with comic book style heroes, often several actions, events, or character traits being of the supernatural nature. For example, Hitman's arch enemy, Talion, flew in from the sky, moved in a blur, and snaps Rosario's neck ("Hitting the Fan ", August 19, 2011). At the same time, "Hitman" carries a level of realism as he faces the joys and woes of everyday life from going to bars and clubs to cool off, to struggling with his relationship with Rosario, to dealing with the grief of her death, to being emotionally split as his friends turn a dark corner and become his mortal enemies. "Hitman" balances itself between two storytelling genres, comic books and science fiction, which naturally go hand in hand as one can observe amongst timeless classics such as Superman and Batman. Hitman's myriad of internal conflicts coupled with occasions of fast-paced, intense action scenes are very illustrative as well as add layers of depth to his character.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comic_book However, sometimes the mood of the story deviates from its original setting as he speaks about as the writing develops an amateurish tone and the content seems useless to progressing the narrative. For example, in the blog post, "Messages " (August 12, 2011), Hitman says "I hate being shot. Seriously, I hate it. It hurts, there's a lot of blood…" The content seems so forced, as if one was writing just to put something down on paper. Ranting on about one's obvious feelings towards being shot seem to be a futile endeavor that adds no meaning to the central plotline or allow readers any incredible insight into the character's mind. Other blog posts trail off to stories of every day situations that are purposefully not unique to the character of Hitman. However, these attempts to give the Hitman character a realistic persona, were simply boring moments of lull for me in an otherwise intense and exciting narrative. Personally, the "Hitman" series reminds me of the Alex Rider ''series by Anthony Horowitz, which also showcased an unique milieu between heart-pumping, slick action and an emotional backdrop that drove the principal characters forward. Themes & Relationship with the Medium "Hitman" raises the typical romantic binaries of "good vs. evil" and "man vs. the system," with a special focus on the idea of claiming vengeance (i.e. in this case for the death of his girlfriend, Rosario). Given the "Hitman" series relies on a comic book genre, blog fiction acts as a unique medium that in many ways mimics comic book medium itself. Just as comic book series is comprised of individual issues that are released on a periodical basis, illustrating the events that took place in the principal characters' lives, blog fiction provides authors the opportunity to periodically post new material that allow readers insight into what happened to Hitman next. Additionally, as the "Hitman" series runs cooperatively with the other character blogs within ''The Urban 30, the blog medium allows authors to incrementally progress their narrative further, allowing authors the opportunity to read other characters' blog posts and respond accordingly to maintain that strong bond between the otherwise nearly separate narratives. Wiretap Follies by J.G. Allen (by Ryan Serrano) ''' ' Introduction Wiretap Follies is a fictional collection of manuscripts of Joshua ''Green Allen’s phone conversations from August 30th, 2008 and November 18th, 2008. In terms of how this work fits into DustinM’s Blog Fiction definition, this work was a (formerly) serial written, singular character diary format. It is important to note that the conversations are a work of fiction, primarily because Joshua Green Allen (JGA) is a thinly veiled character persona of the author in fictitious scenarios. Contextualizing all of the conversations is one common theme: the government has tapped JGA’s phone. The “government,” in this non-blog aware, mistakes his bar pick up line (“Pretty mama, I’m gonna assassinate ''that bush tonight”) as a plan to assassinate the president and decides to tap his phone for a year. It must be noted that the actual “pick up line incident,” supposedly occurs in 2007, so this is a recounting of these conversations on unspecified days. In this sense, Wiretap Follies occurs in hazy time because each conversation is a recounting of one post-January 2007. Analysis ' ''' www.wiretapfollies.com presents his work in a minimalistic white space that, as one clicks through the archive of conversations, houses the dialogue of the calls. The format of the conversations themselves are in manuscript form. It is also formatted like the dialogue of a play. It is different however in that it uses a “---click---,“ at the end of every conversation, to signal that the dialogue has ended (who hangs up depends on the scene being depicted), and other stage directions, like coughing in the archive’s opening piece, Uterus Polio (JGA v His Boss). Engaging with this text is like scrolling through an IM log, except without the timestamps and usernames are abbreviated. The collection of fifteen scenes of dialogue primarily involve an interplay between JGA and another party, under the context that a third party, the government, is listening in. In this way, until the issue is actually addressed in the last installment of the piece, Click, the “government” is a third presence within the scenes at all times. This contextualizes some of the outrageous humor from, what is rendered as, comedic fictional spins on actual conversations. However, engaging with the text is only similar to an IM; in that, it is a transcript of a dialogue on the screen, while the actual text is being rendered, reads like lines for a play. I would suggest that these do include some actual conversations are real because of the way they are rendered through the actual dialogue, or are heavily “researched.” Take for example, Comfort , JGA’s call to 411 to “…find out where the parties are at tonight." Comfort reflects the actual responses of silence and an actual example of how a 411 operator may diffuse being hit-on and being grilled on “where the party is.” It however takes a sharp departure from realism when the 411 operator details how JGA must go to 7-11, buy ten or twenty bags of chips and give those chips to the cashier saying, “These are for the party.” Then, supposedly, JGA must wait in his car till a secret courier arrives at his window with a slip of paper with the address of the party. Death's Blog by The Grim Reaper (Peter Liu) Death's Blog is a fictional blog created by a fictionalized Grim Reaper (the real author(s) is unknown). Written in a standard blog fiction formathttp://blog.blogfiction.org/2008/02/blog-fiction-formats.html written by a single character, this blog is a humor blog fiction in which Death talks about many topics that are separated into three categories: Frequently Asked Questions, Death's Mail, and Death's Musings. Frequently Asked Questions In this section, Death describes the scenes of the Afterlife through a series of question and answer posts. The writing makes it seem as if Heaven and the Afterlife are real-life, physical places, and he acts as a tour guide explaining what is happening there and what "life" is like. The Afterlife is just that: life after death. He describes Heaven's Social Scene , where apparently "reincarnation sex is all the rage." In fact, he notes that in "a recent survey of the Afterlife's top fifteen pick-up lines listed almost a third of them as referencing reincarnation, including the number f one pick-up line in all of Heaven." He proceeds to talk about what parties are like in the Afterlife (usually involving alcohol and togas) and what current trends are, as described in the style column in the Afterlife Gazette. As a reader reading through these posts, I cannot help but laugh and just how witty Death can be. There seems to be a Heaven's equivalent to everything we can experience here on Earth, including Heaven's cafeteria and even a "Souls-Who-Died of-Untreated-Infections Lacrosse Team"! What I find most compelling is that Death is able to draw from readers' experiences as a human being in describing what the Afterlife and Heaven are like, something that no one can ever do. He even draws on famous "dead" celebrities, noting that "the latest and hottest supergroup consists of: John Lennon, Frank Sinatra, and Mozart" and that "Calcutta, Heaven, located on the Western side, is a huge epicenter for the arts." From reading this, it seems as if Heaven and the Afterlife have so much in common with Earth. Death's Mail In this section, Death responds to "Dear Death --" questions submitted to a mailbag from humans on Earth, with some submitted via Twitter. The topics of questions range in variety, from asking about why he wears a hood and carries a scythe to some of the most ridiculous questions imaginable. My favorite is: "Dear Death, My friend and her cousin were recently involved in a fatal car crash, When their reaper showed up to take them to the Afterlife, he broke out an electric keyboard, started playing, and insisted that they both do the 'Chicken Dance' before he'd take them anywhere. Is it me, or do they have a legitimate lawsuit against the universe? Please advise." From Pam O'Grady of Manhattan Beach, California. Death answers each question with such a level of detail that makes readers believe that this crazy, fictionalized Afterlife does exist. Death answers questions sent to him from a plethora of outlets, including social networks and email. Death's Musings In this section, Death reflects on his thoughts on many topics. In THE MEANING OF LIFE, Death claims that God has grown tired of answering the same question over and over again, so he published a 17,000-page book called "The Meaning of Life," which was one of the most highly anticipated releases in Afterlife publishing history. This book written in Latin, or a "dead language," had mixed reviews, and even the most brightest of philosophers struggled to understand it. In Career Day , Death talks about his neighbor's little boy Oliver who had Career Day recently at his elementary school. Death offered to go as Oliver's dad. His experience did not go well, as unfortunately, he was scheduled to present after a heroic firefighter and made the little children cry. Death's Blog is unique in that it presents a new perspective on not only death, but life as well. Many of what Death describes in the Afterlife we as humans can experience in life on Earth. As a reader, I could not stop reading into Death's thoughts and his take on regular events, and how it compares with life in the Afterlife. Each post relates to an aspect of Death's life as he goes through retirement, which is a major theme of his posts. Each post presents a situation, as ridiculous as it may seem, that has shaped Death's experiences in retirement, as well as his dating life. He describes these situations very nonchalantly and makes these situations seem as if they are everyday events. These events are presented in a diary-format in which Death records what he experiences as he lives them. This blog, as mentioned previously, is written in a standard blog fiction format, which, as defined by DustinM , is written by a single character. In each post, there includes a comical graphic that relates to what the post is about. Most importantly, Death himself responds to many of the readers' comments in character. This promotes audience interactivity, which is critical for fictional blogs to be successful and growhttp://blog.blogfiction.org/2009/05/interacting-with-blog-fiction.html. In many of the comments, as well as the reader questions sections on Death's Blog, audience members also participate "in character," wherein they ask questions about how recent loved ones are doing in the Afterlife, and even sympathize with Death on many of his experiences. References About Section from the ELO: http://eliterature.org/about/ Blog Fiction Defined by DustinM: http://blog.blogfiction.org/2008/08/blog-fiction-defined.html From Blog to Blog Fiction by DustinM: http://blog.blogfiction.org/2010/04/from-blog-to-blog-fiction.html Blog Fiction Formats by DustinM: http://blog.blogfiction.org/2008/02/blog-fiction-formats.html